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This is Thirteen: Anvil

The super-nice guys in Anvil actually handed me a finished copy of This is Thirteen last year, just as the hit documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil was about to really take off.

I can only presume, given the 30 years' worth of career-sabotaging misfortune depicted in the film, that some horrible set of circumstances has delayed the album's wide release a further 15 months. That seems to be the way it goes in Anvil Country. It wouldn't be all that surprising, in fact, if The Tonight Show studio burned down before the hard-luck Toronto metal trio goes onstage on Oct. 6.

On the upside, This is Thirteen is good enough to sustain the career resurgence hatched in the movie's wake, just as the band was hoping when it sought out Chris Tsangarides, producer of their 1982 album Metal on Metal to return to its unwaveringly classic metal sound the whoomp it has lacked on a long series of cheapo studio recordings.

Anvil's strength here is that 50-something singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner – joined in recent years by somewhat younger bassist Glenn Five – have never stopped loving and playing the metal since they formed the band out of high school in 1978. Tsangarides obviously recognizes this, since his straightforward production basically just allows these formidable players to let `er rip and show off the chops a lifetime spent slogging it out in crappy bars can get you.

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The band's not reinventing the genre, no – Anvil in 2009 sounds pretty much like Anvil did in 1982 – and Lips' goofy lyrics often read like they were written while hurrying on to the next solo. But give these lads six-and-a-half minutes with a slow-`n'-heavy stoner groove like "This is Thirteen" or turn them loose on the back end of a double-kicking thrash juggernaut like "Ready to Fight," "Axe to Grind" or "Game Over" and they frequently impress with what a ripping, Satan-is-my-co-pilot racket they can still raise. Anvil's actually in better form than a lot of the greying metal acts doddering past their primes on the touring circuit these days. They've worked hard for their moment, and it shows.

Top track: "American Refugee." One of the record's most satisfyingly brutish burnouts, unfortunately buried well past some filler at the end of the album.

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